I'm Alyssa Stringer from Austin, TX and currently in Denton, TX! I want to share my life as a college student, writer, YoungLife leader and new believer. Writing is my absolute passion and I hope to strengthen it through out this blog!

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Home

As came back to my college "home" from visiting my "hometown" I kind of felt like a vagabond, someone with no permanent home. It's the weirdest feeling to pull into the driveway of the house you've grown up in since you were eight years old and to be flooded by nostalgia as you drive through the streets you've explored your whole life, yet feel like a such a stranger. I thought something was wrong with me because I couldn't just enjoy that I am home. I HAD to be overwhelmed with the contradicting feelings of all the positive and negative things that have happened to me as I've grown up. As I celebrated my sister graduating high school with my family and friends I was joyful but at the same time I wouldn't let myself get attached because I knew I was going to pack up and leave.

I said about 345 times as I talked to old friends, "this is so weird." I loved seeing everyone and how they have changed and grown but it was so sobering. The people I put all my love and time in are doing different things with their time, I'm even doing different things with my time. There wasn't one thing that felt the same or one person that was the same.

I was filled with so much emotion because I know that "home" is not a place anymore. It can't be. My house has different furniture and fresh paint on the walls. My room is bland and my bed doesn't feel like my own. The town I've grown up in has new houses, gas stations and ice cream shops. I can't soak up those places anymore and call it my home because it is forever changing, which is partly why I think I was so emotional.

My home can't be my college town either because when I graduate where will I go? I can't stay in one place forever wishing that I will eventually get comfortable because there is something in me that won't let me get attached to anything.
So what do you do when you don't want to go back to where you were but you don't want to be where you are?
I think God gave me a heart of a wanderer, where I can't get attached to a certain place for too long. Of course I feel like I don't belong anywhere because I yet have so many places to go. I've never been outside of America or to Tennessee or New Hampshire, how do I know I don't belong there?

Coming home after a year off at college was difficult for me, not because it's hard to follow the rules of my mothers' house but because I am growing and constantly changing and to feel comfortable in one place isn't what my heart wants anymore.

So advice to the young audience who may be feeling a type of "homesick" that isn't associated with their hometown like I am... Fill your time, thoughts and actions with loving the people who make it "home." The moments I spend with my family is where I feel at home. The time I spend working to save money so I can pay for my college and eventually graduate to have a career is when I feel at home. Exploring the places I've never been is when I feel at home. Running outside with no music is when I feel at home. Home is what will establish you and what I have discovered it is ultimately what makes up who you are. The change that comes with post college is a good thing because you can't move forward if you stay the same. Find who you are and what is important and that will be your home forever.